April 21st.—We Set Out From Kayt Beg In The Course Of The Morning, In
The Company Of A Caravan
Bound for Suez, comprising about twenty camels,
some of which belonged to Moggrebyn pilgrims, who had come by sea from
Tunis to Alexandria; the others to a Hedjaz merchant, and to the
Bedouins of Mount Sinai, who had brought passengers from Suez to Cairo,
and were now returning with corn to their mountains. As I knew the
character of these Bedouins by former experience, and that the road was
perfectly
DERB EL ANKABYE
[p.459] safe, at least as far as the convent, I did not think it
necessary this time to travel in the disguise of a pauper. Some few
comforts may be enjoyed in the desert even by those who do not travel
with tents and servants; and whenever these comforts must be
relinquished, it becomes a very irksome task to cross a desert, as I
fully experienced during several of my preceding journeys.
The Bedouins of Sinai, or, as they are more usually denominated, the
Towara, or Bedouins of Tor, formerly enjoyed the exclusive privilege of
transporting goods, provisions, and passengers, from Cairo to Suez, and
the route was wholly under their protection. Since the increased power
of the Pasha of Egypt, it has been thrown open to camel-drivers of all
descriptions, Egyptian peasants, as well as Syrian and Arabian Bedouins;
and as the Egyptian camels are much stronger, for a short journey, than
those of the desert, the Bedouins of Mount Sinai have lost the greater
part of their custom, and the transport trade in this route is now
almost wholly in the hands of the Egyptian carriers.
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